Field Programmable Gate Arrays

10/09/2013

VDC is pleased to announce the publication of its annual outlook for the global market for embedded CPUs, MCUs and FPGAs. This research is an invaluable strategic and tactical planning tool for chip, tool, and board vendors.

Hightlights include:

We expect ARM to continue to take CPU market
share from Intel in the years to come, though Intel will succeed in defending
its position in high-performance applications.

Xilinx will cede FPGA market share to growing
competitors Altera, Lattice Semiconductor, and Microsemi – who all stand to benefit
from strong global demand for communications equipment, and OEMs’ continued
migration away from ASICs.

The MCU market will grow rapidly, with the
automotive sector representing an increasingly large share of the market.

Heterogeneous computing will drive big changes in
the markets for all discrete processing technologies. As integrated
architectures are used to consolidate functionality and boost processor
efficiency, traditional vendors will need to deploy new business strategies to drive
growth and margins.

The importance of tools when selecting a chip
will drive additional M&A activity, as large chip vendors swallow smaller
tool providers. Potentially attractive
acquisition targets include DDC-I, IAR, or Lauterbach.

The market for these embedded processing
technologies (CPUs, MCUs and FPGAs combined) will grow to over $US 40 billion
by 2017, at a compound annual growth rate of 6.9% overall.

04/29/2013

Last week, while attending the 2013 DESIGN West/Embedded
Systems Conference in San Jose we presented the VDC Research Embeddy Award for the
best new embedded hardware product. As part of the selection process the VDC Embedded
Hardware team met with more than 30 companies to discuss product announcements
and a variety of industry trends impacting the embedded hardware market today.
Before we get to the award winner, we will start with a few highlights from some of the
suppliers we spoke to at the show.

Connectivity enhanced
Microcontrollers:Microchip usually makes several significant embedded
hardware announcements at DW/ESC shows and this year was no exception. VDC was given a detailed briefing on several
new connectivity modules that OEMs can use for many applications. If the OEM's
product already has a computing element, the new microchip modules are designed
to easily integrate the needed Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, ZigBee, MiWi, and/or
proprietary network types. If the OEM’s engineers have not settled on a
processing element to interface with sensors or product components they might
consider the modules that include integrated MCUs. The good news for OEMs is
that the selection of any of these Microchip modules will likely eliminate
product testing for overall FCC compliance and production test and calibration.
Microchip demonstrated how a lighting OEM might integrate these new products in
a way that would enable lighting products to be controlled in M2M applications
including network based portals and authenticated mobile devices.

Secure M2M: Our
next stop at the show was with Icon Labs and they were highlighting a new
barrier/firewall device that was well suited for supporting M2M on legacy
equipment in industrial applications. The unit we saw was targeted for a market
price of ~$1K but included many security elements using Intel Atom processing
and embedded software from Icon Labs’ partners including Wind River, ZiLog,
McAfee, and Green Hills.

New Rugged Handheld
Devices: At our next stop, the VDC EHW team was greeted by the enthusiastic
ADLINK team and they had every right to be that way. There were a number of
interesting products in many categories.
We were particularly interested in ADLINK’s foray into the enterprise handheld
device market with the IMX-9000 which includes barcode reading capability,
multiple connectivity protocols all contained in a stylish but rugged enclosure
that is said to withstand IP67 and 1.5M drop tests. While at the ADLINK booth,
we saw the new Advanced TCA processor blade. The new aTCA-9300 is well suited
for media delivery platforms because of the need for scalable processing to
deliver content in the needed forms and formats for the transmission and end
use by the target device.

Media Processing:
As a bit of background, it is not feasible to store content in all forms and
formats suitable for delivery to, and use by, the huge numbers of things used
to view them. This means that content has to be converted on the fly and that
means there is a huge need for embedded processing products to perform these
tasks.

ASICs and FPGAs: We
received updates on the latest developments in the world of ASICs and FPGAs. We
spoke with Altera who divides the majority of the FPGA market with Xilinx. Altera
provided an update on the SoC FPGA line that was introduced in late
2011. The Cyclone V and Arria V FPGAs incorporate ARM CPU cores with FPGAs to
allow OEMs to develop more powerful and flexible product designs while
economizing on needed circuit board space. One advantage that FPGAs normally have over
ASICS is that they take less time to design and can be brought into production
faster. If design issues are discovered at later stages, they can be corrected
faster and at lower cost. The Altera inclusion of ARM cores allows OEM
engineers to leverage many development tools that are available for ARM and
that theoretically increases the advantages over traditional ASIC processes.

On the ASIC side, we received a briefing by Triad
Semiconductor on their ViaASICs and the
associated development toolset ViaDesigner. The goals of these two products is
to eliminate the time-to-market and development cost advantages of FPGA
products over ASICs. The process works like this. In the semiconductor fab, the
wafers are started and arrays of circuits and functional blocks are laid down
but not configured and interconnected. These are then stocked until needed. An OEM
engineer then uses the development tool that determines how the Triad chip will
be configured. The data from that tool is sent to the fab and they create the
mask(s) needed to for the next steps in the wafer creation process. The next
steps lay down the layers needed for connecting the functional blocks creating
a finished product.

New SBCs:Advantech
highlighted a new compact design Single Board Computer (SBC) called the MIO-5290 that can be ordered with 3rd Gen Intel i3 or i7 processors.
With its ability to drive 3 independent displays with intense graphics, and the
availability to add various I/O modules to customize the product, the MIO-5290
is well suited for many applications such as intelligent signage. The VDC team
identified the MIO as one of the finalists in the Embeddy Award selection
process.

Another finalist in the Embeddy Award selection process was
WinSystems SBC35C series of products that utilize the 800 Mhz Freescale i.MX 6Q Industrial Processor. There were
several things that impressed us. The SBC35C board layout was very well thought
out with industrial bus connections all on one side and the other needed
connections on the other. The SBC35C can be run with Power over Ethernet (PoE)
or a single DC source. The last thing that impressed us was the fact that the
WinSystems team was showing their product the proper respect by handling the
demo SBC with an anti-static bag. If they do that on the show floor, you can
expect that their production and test process is also using similar
precautions.

2013
Hardware Embeddy Winner: And
now, without further ado, the winner of the VDC Hardware Embeddy award for the
2013 Design West / ESC show was AMD for their new G-Series family of SoC
processors that we believe will make a big impact in the embedded hardware
market.

12/31/2012

A few days ago, I posed the above question in a blog on these pages – and answered it, at least to a degree, by talking about single-atom transistors. Although one (count it – one) has actually been made, the technology is a long way from being ubiquitous.

However, like global warming and climate change, the single-atom “wall” is real. And we are rapidly approaching it. Use of GPUs for general-purpose computing is a hedge against the wall; these have far more transistors than conventional CPUs and facilitate parallel computing. Intel, NVIDIA and AMD are all pursuing this approach to supercomputing. But this isn’t a long-term solution; GPUs are faced with the same wall.

Intel is pushing toward the Moore’s law limit through cooperative efforts with several outside firms. Intel has invested a staggering US$ 4.1 billion in ASML, a Dutch semiconductor equipment manufacturer. The investment will ultimately yield Intel a 15% share of ASML, and provides US$ 3.3 billion for R&D to make “extreme ultra-violet lithography” or EUVL (using super-short wavelengths of UV light for the etching process) practical, and to develop 450-mm wafers (as opposed to today’s 300-mm wafers). The former will enable 10-nm processes, while the latter will reduce manufacturing costs. And Intel isn’t the only one; Samsung has followed suit with an investment in ASML, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd. (TSMC) has also made a significant investment. TSMC purports to be the world’s largest independent semiconductor factory, and, although they are currently building three 300-mm wafer fabs, their current production is limited to 200-mm.

Increasing transistor density by shrinking their size is only one way of battling the approaching wall. TSMC and one of its rivals, GlobalFoundries (GloFo), as well as Intel and the rest of the usual suspects, are actively pursuing 3-D chip technology. 3-D chips have been made; Intel’s Ivy Bridge architecture utilizes 3-D technology. 3-D transistors, called FinFETs, promise to both increase speed and reduce power consumption.

3-D ICs

3-D integrated circuits, which will allow far greater transistor density in a given planar footprint, are on their way. However, fabrication of these is not a trivial matter. Early versions comprised stacking dice atop one another with an insulating layer between, and interconnecting the dies using a rather laborious process. This was called “Chip Stack MCM,” and didn’t produce a “real” 3-D chip. But, by 2008, 3-D IC technology had progressed to the point that four types had been defined, as follows:

(1) Monolithic, wherein components and their interconnections were built in layers on a single wafer which was then diced into 3-D chips. This technology has been the subject of a DARPA grant, with research conducted at Stanford University.

(2) Wafer-on-Wafer, wherein components are built on separate wafers, which are then aligned, bonded and diced into 3-D ICs. Vertical connections comprise “through-silicon vias” (TSVs) which may either be built into the wafers before bonding or created in the stack after bonding. This process is fraught with technical difficulties, not the least of which is relatively low yield.

(3) Die-on-Wafer, where components are built on two wafers. One is then diced, with the individual dice aligned and bonded onto sites on the second wafer. TSV creation may be done either before or after bonding. Additional layers may be added before the final dicing.

(4) Die-on-Die, where components are built on multiple dice which are then aligned and bonded. TSVs may be created either before or after bonding.

There are obvious technical difficulties and pitfalls, no matter which approach is used. These include yield factors (a single defective dice may make an entire stack useless; thermal concerns (caused by the density of components; difficulty of automating manufacture; and a lack of standards.

In my layman’s opinion, a new approach to 3-D technology may be needed before it becomes truly viable. Currently components are built on wafers through the selective removal of material. Construction of 3-D chips could be simplified through selective deposition of material rather than its removal. However, that’s beyond today’s state-of-the-art.

As we look at biological equivalents, though, it’s very clear that brains are 3-D structures. I doubt that true artificial intelligence can be realized in a relatively small package without the development of true 3-D chips. Moore’s law will ultimately stymie continued development of planar chip technology.

Stay tuned for part 3 – there’s a really interesting development out there!

09/11/2012

There's still time to connect with the VDC Research Embedded Hardware & Software team at the ESC show next week but the coveted time-slots on Tuesday are rapidly being taken. If you believe you have a new product that qualifies for one of the VDC embeddy awards contact us as soon as possible as at least one member of the VDC team needs to see the product demo/briefing during or before the show. The winners will be notified on Tuesday evening and announced just before Wednesday's keynote speech.

The VDC team will be at the show site starting on Monday and, of course we can also schedule meetings on Wednesday as well.

If you would like to schedule a meeting around Embedded Hardware, please contact:

08/27/2012

VDC Research Group will be joining the Design East/Embedded Systems
Conference 2012 exhibition and conference. During the conference, we
will be presenting the coveted VDC Embeddy awards to a deserving product
in the software and hardware categories. To make sure your
product is considered, please make sure that:

The product is formally announced at the show or, has been announced as of August, 2012

That the VDC Research team will be briefed on the details of the product by your show staff.

Note: The Embeddys will be presented before Wednesday's keynote address. Therefore the briefings need to be completed by the evening of Tuesday September 18th.

VDC’s Embedded Hardware Team will be available at the show starting Monday September 17th and will be
at the conference through the 19th. During that time, we welcome the
opportunity to connect with attending vendors. We look forward to
explaining VDC’s research methodology, learning about your latest
product releases, and discussing your market research and strategic
needs.

04/13/2012

In this blog I will continue to explore some of the VDC Embedded Hardware team experience at the Design West ESC show. We saw a lot of great product demonstrations along with some excellent detailed briefings and meetings so it’s difficult to boil it all down to a reasonable size blog but here we go:

AMD: We saw a number of embedded computer products from multiple manufactures that featured AMD processors. Many of these would be great for scalable edge node applications. Heard a bit more about the latest Opteron 3200 series of processors which will likely find many cloud based applications. While at AMD we visited partner Xi3 they have some really nifty looking cube type computers that can be deployed in array like structures. The concept they were showing was a datacenter on wheels.

Atmel: Was showing some new products that seemed really great for embedded M2M type connectivity but, according to the press material I received, the details are embargoed for another week or two.

Digi-International: Digi was a company we covered in the Migrating to the Embedded Cloud report that published this week so we really wanted to stop by and see if there was anything new going on. What we saw didn’t disappoint as there was a lot of evidence about the partnerships we talk about in the report. Digi and Wind River were announcing a collaboration to deliver M2M wireless connectivity solutions using Intel processors. This is on the heels of a similar partnership that Digi has with Freescale. We saw that Digi was using another company’s embedded computer hardware products as part of the cloud connectivity demonstration but, as that partnership is not announced; I can’t write more about that now.

Integrated Device Technology (IDT): In this booth there was a very impressive demonstration of serial RapidIO technology being deployed in a number of different companies’ products. This is very important in cellular 3G and 4G deployments. Despite being handled by different protocols, hardware and connection methods the data travelled end-to-end efficiently and, most importantly without being corrupted.

Imagination Technologies: We saw some really great examples of their IP used in mobile devices and applications. As people become more ingrained with mobile devices, high resolution videos, and larger screen sizes, it takes some pretty complex systems on chip to make it work. The difficult thing is getting the needed performance while not sucking the mobile equipments battery dry.

Inside Secure: As the market for M2M is growing there needs to be ways to ensure of the identity of the machines and people being connected. Inside Secure gave us a briefing on several of their security technologies that can be embedded into products to address these issues.

Lantronix: As an OEM is making design decisions on new products or looking to update older ones adding wired and/or wireless connectivity can be a problem. Lantronix briefed us on several of their products where the connective capability can be added to new designs or even old ones on an as needed basis. Almost as a proof of concept, Lantronix produced xPrintServer using technology they usually sell to OEMs to allow Apple devices to directly connect to existing legacy printers using a downloadable app.

Microchip: The VDC Embedded SW and HW teams had several meetings with Microchip and we were particularly happy to have an opportunity for a great discussion their President and CEO Steve Sanghi. As this blog looks to be running a little long, I will give the special focus to topics we covered with Mr. Sanghi in a blog next week. The hardware team learned a lot about some of the new Microchip MCUs that are adding analog circuitry such as ADCs, DACs, Op-Amps, and Comparators. This puts more functionality into a single package while, at the same time often reduces device pin count.

Micron: I saw a detailed briefing on the latest about the Micron memory cube product. The through hole vias on the semiconductor dies that make this design possible are interesting in themselves.

National Instruments: This was another company that is covered in the Embedded Cloud report and, we saw that the Compact Rio product has some new, even more compact, product lines extensions. In the booth there was also a mock-up of a Siemens smart grid transmission line breaker module. The N/I Compact Rio was part of the design in that it could capture and transmit events that happened on the transmission lines. One of the neat things is Siemens/NI project is that the breaker can be reset remotely.

Netronome: If you ever want to see a place where powerful embedded processors are used in large quantities in high volume applications, a network flow processor is a good place to look. These impressive units we saw inspect packets and move internet traffic at extremely high rates.

Power.org: An interesting talk with one of the Directors at the IBM booth to learn more about this organization that unifies standards among its members around the Power Architecture technology with a goal of making sure that processors and communications products work efficiently as the scale of connectivity grow ever increasingly higher.

Silex: We saw some product briefings on their connectivity modules. With respect to M2M connectivity this is pretty interesting if for example you are a product designer supporting a legacy product that you want to add M2M services to or, in other cases, you are worried that a particular standard fall out of favor, and you want the product you are designing to be future proof.

SuperMicro: They have a very large line of products and the MicroCloud product was particularly interesting to us because of the embedded cloud report where we had profiled SuperMicro. The MicroCloud product impressed us with its ability to scale up as a cloud service and/or the amount of machines being supported in an edge node application grows.

Texas Instruments: TI had a lot to show us with all types of embedded hardware products adding GPS and motion sensing as well as Wi-Fi and other connectivity. Anyone that has taken a portable device with GPS applications into a building, large city, or tunnel will realize that these types of products have a waiting market. We also got briefings on some new process intensive DSP products that are becoming increasingly important to many markets. This is one of the topics I will expand on in the next installment of this blog series.

Next week, I’ll give a few last high level takeaways about things we saw and discussed at the show.

02/24/2012

VDC Research Group will be joining the Design West/Embedded Systems Conference 2012 exhibition and conference. During the conference, we will be presenting the coveted VDC Embeddy awards to a deserving product in each of the 2 software and hardware categories. To make sure your product is considered, please make sure that:

The product is formally announced at the show or, has been announced as of January, 2012

That the VDC Research team will be briefed on the details of the product by your show staff.

VDC’s Embedded Hardware Team will be arriving March 27th and will be at the conference through March 29th. During that time, we welcome the opportunity to connect with attending vendors. We look forward to explaining VDC’s research methodology, learning about your latest product releases, and discussing your market research and strategic needs.

12/30/2011

With respect to Embedded Integrated Computer Systems (EICSs) the semiconductor test market has some unique attributes that may not be immediately obvious or logical to outsiders. The recent VDC report on EICSs used in the industrial automation market estimated 2010 revenues of ~$210 Million for semiconductor processing making it an attractive market to enter. Embedded computing suppliers that thrive here are likely to follow these 5 key rules.

Make it small: Floor space is at a premium in wafer fabrication/semiconductor test facilities. These facilities are often very carefully controlled for dust, static, electrical interference, vibration, temperature, and humidity and therefore represent some of the most expensive square footage in the industrial automation market with respect to operating costs. Computers that can be embedded inside or flexibly mounted to take advantage of available niches in test cells and or test equipment are well received.

Make it Fast: Reducing test times for a given device by even a few milliseconds or having the ability to test many devices in parallel are keys to winning the tester sale. EICSs in addition to deeply embedded Digital Signal Processing (DSP), Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) and Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) are often used in high quantity to achieve this goal. It is important to remember that a semiconductor tester has to be faster than the state of the art devices it is testing. In this blog, I am focusing on EICSs but many of the 5 keys are applicable to deeply embedded computing components as well.

Make it easy/fast to service: Semiconductor testers are extremely expensive with it being quite easy for a well configured unit to cost several million dollars. Even so, the return on investment can be made in only a few weeks to the owner. Therefore, any downtime is very visible and Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) is expected to be in minutes, not hours. Suppliers should design EICSs to have very high reliability but also with easy to access mounts, enclosures, and internal components that allow them to be serviced while wearing a clean room suit and gloves.

Make a flexible configuration: The EICS that is required for a semiconductor tester varies depending on the role it is asked to perform. A production tester needs only a simple Human Machine Interface (HMI) but one that is used for test program development and debugging will need more memory depth and graphics capability to allow the engineer to see and manipulate test patterns as well as analyze the data that is captured while tests are run.

Make it exactly the same – for a long time: A semiconductor test platform will usually be actively sold for at least 5 years but often needs to be supported for at least 10 years and sometimes even longer. Once a tester platform is discontinued a market can develop for the used ones and, in some cases for them can be equal to or even exceeding their original factory price. This can happen when the demand for some legacy semiconductor devices becomes higher than expected. Once a test program has been written and specialized probe cards for wafers and/or interface boards for packaged device handlers have been designed it is extremely expensive process to move them to another tester platform.

Throughout the entire tester platform lifecycle, any changes in embedded computers can require that thousands of hours be spent to re-certify test programs and debug them if problems are seen. Faster computers will often be problematic if, for example, the programmer did not have enough settling time after an instrument was set up before making the measurement.Changes to an EICS can also lead to increased inventory costs. Because of the MTTR concerns discussed earlier, caches of spare parts are stocked in globally dispersed warehouses and even right at customer sites to allow instant or very quick availability should a failure occur. Changes to an EICS can require multiple sets of slightly different inventory to be stocked.

In summary, a key to winning an embedded hardware product sale to a semiconductor tester company is being active in the design phase and then executing a commitment to provide a stable product through the entire tester product lifecycle. The surprise can be that a newer, faster, or cheaper EICS product will typically not unseat the incumbent unless the original supplier falters in one of the 5 key areas.

09/06/2011

The Embedded Systems Conference will be held this month (September 26th-29th) at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston.

VDC will be attending the conference once again this year and will be presenting our 7th annual Embeddy Awards for Best in Show live at the conference. The winners will be announced live ahead of Wednesday's morning keynote session.

So how can your company win the Embeddy award?

To be considered, you must schedule a meeting with VDC to discuss the announcement that you are making at the show. You can arrange a meeting time with VDC by doing one of the following:

05/27/2011

The March 2011 disaster that unleashed massive destruction across Japan, clearly inflicted an unconscionable toll on the citizens of the world’s third largest economy. While we monitor the country’s recovery, VDC Research Group also recently assessed the economic impact on the embedded processor supplier community through a series of executive briefings during Q2 2011.

In order to assess the specific impact of this catastrophe, VDC Research Group was briefed by key suppliers across the embedded processor landscape. The product spectrum includes leading companies that design and develop central processing units (CPUs), graphics processing units (GPUs), field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and microcontroller units (MCUs).

VDC’s primary objective was to more deeply research and understand the, (a) supply chain impact, (b) manufacturing impact, (c) and the average selling price impact in the second calendar quarter based on the following self-directed impact scale.

Our research findings suggest that a number of processor suppliers are currently experiencing only minor disruptions from the disaster, while one supplier, in particular, Renesas recently reported to VDC severe disruptions with their product’s supply chain.